Oops: After skipping Trump’s inauguration, Rep. Lewis gets BAD news

The media FAWNED over Georgia’s Representative John Lewis after he decided to skip the presidential inauguration and proclaimed that he didn’t believe Donald Trump was a “legitimate president.”

NBC said glowingly at the time, Rep. John Lewis might be in his 16th term in Congress, but the civil rights hero still knows how to capture the spotlight.

After Lewis told NBC News that he didn’t believe Donald Trump was a legitimate president — and after Trump fired back on Saturday morning that Lewis was “all talk” — the Georgia congressman has soared in popularity.

Lewis, a Freedom Rider who was brutally beaten five decades ago by Alabama state troopers while marching for voting rights, chronicled his life in the civil rights movement in “March,” a three-volume graphic novel published last year that shot to number one on Amazon’s best seller list over the weekend, The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

By Sunday afternoon, “March,” which won the National Book Award for young people’s literature last year, was still holding steady at Amazon’s top slot. Lewis’ memoir, “Walking With the Wind,” published in 2015, ranked at number three on the list.

At one point on Saturday, 3,000 tweets mentioning Lewis were sent in one minute, Pacilio added.

It will be interesting to see if the media and his fans are so eager to celebrate his latest “accomplishment” — an ethics complaint.

The Washington Free Beacon reports, A watchdog group is asking congressional ethics officials to investigate Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.) and his chief of staff over apparent violations of House ethics rules, according to a letter released on Monday.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust’s letter is asking the Office of Congressional Ethics to probe Lewis chief of staff Michael Collins’ dual roles in the congressman’s Washington office and as the treasurer for his 2016 reelection campaign.

Ethics rules bar senior House staff from serving in any fiduciary role for a political organization, and specifically mentioned campaign treasurers as a prohibited position for such staffers.

FACT’s complaint doesn’t just target Collins; it claims that Lewis himself is culpable for ethics violations by his top staffer.

“In this case, not only did Collins directly violate these rules, but Representative Lewis also violated the ethics rules because his own campaign employed Collins in a prohibited position and paid him a prohibited salary,” FACT wrote in its letter to OCE.

The OCE recently survived congressional efforts to disband the office, which some Republicans said is prone to politically motivated leaks and erodes due process for members accused of wrongdoing. They walked back the move after an outcry from congressional Democrats.

Remember all the hysterical headlines about Republicans in the House voting to gut the ethics watchdog committee?

Lieutenant Colonel West served 22 years in the United States Army and was elected to serve in the United States Congress in 2010. Allen is a Fox News Contributor and author of Guardian of the Republic: An American Ronin’s Journey to Faith, Family and Freedom.